I don’t get my back up because he’s not wrong. And I’ll find out myself without my meddling uncles getting involved.
“Talon was there today. Twice. He’s going to find out about my designation if he goes snooping through my file.”
“Might be unavoidable, but we’ll deal when we have to. However, we have to, too.” He pumps his fist, being threatening, making me roll my eyes at him.
I look away for a minute, coming back to their watchful and overprotective gazes. “I also have to go down to their lawyer’s office tomorrow, to sign the forms.”
“All right, you take your guy, and two of ours. You don’t go anywhere by yourself. They go everywhere with you, Raney. Including if you need to snap one off.” He jabs his finger at me again in case I didn’t understand his words apparently. Douchebag.
I grit my teeth and swallow the bitchy words on my tongue as I start to feel like all my freedom is being stripped away because I’ve been naughty or something. But the more sensible side of me acknowledges I’m more than happy to have as many people as I can get to go with me tomorrow. Although, his reaction isn’t necessarily just about me, I get that; King would have lost his shit because of the cops sniffing around.
“I’m okay,” I say softly. And if I don’t arc up, they’ll relax too. It’s a win-win situation. “Any chance you can come with me, Joker? It’s just I don’t know Rhodes.”
Joker stands up. “Come on, let’s get you settled in King’s place, and then I’ll suss out the finer details with Puck about what he’s got going on.”
I go to follow, but my knee locks up. A split-second later pain screams through me, and I can’t hide that from them. I breathe through the worst of it. There’s no way I’m going to be able to walk down to the house after the day I’ve had. “You’ll have to drive me down. I can’t walk that far.”
“I thought your dicky knee was getting better,” Hawk says, holding an arm out for me to hold onto too.
“It was, until one of the lovely agents at CBIJ decided I was taking too long to get up, or down. Both probably.”
And much like the noise Koz, King, and Puck made, my uncles’ anger sounds the same.
Hawk goes full mom mode on me. “I’ll get you some better pain meds than what you’ve got.”
“How do you know I don’t have good pain meds?”
Ibis grins, looking a little crazy, “Because you’re still looking like you’re itching for a fight. Don’t you fucking forget we know you, no matter where you live, you’re still our pseudo kid. I’ve got just what you need, some wicked buds just arrived. Have a smoke before you go to sleep.”
“Yeah, that would be good, actually,” I answer.
“You should have come here before you went to Deluge, Raney.” Joker swings around suddenly, not hiding how pissed off he is. I knew this was coming. Despite all the other shit, all of them will be itching to have a go that I didn’t come see Dad and them as soon as we got in.
“Nah. I had heaps more important things to do,” I grin, pointing to my new tattoo.
“Clean that up and put some cream on that before you get stoned.” Ibis pulls me to a stop and pushes my head to the side so he can read it properly. His finger goes to touch it.
“Not sure Koz would like you touching his name on my body, Ibis,” I say quietly because everyone here knows how possessive Koz is.
The touching thing is a weird one. If I initiate it, Koz doesn’t have an issue. It’s a different story if the other person initiates touching me. Apparently, it’s an alpha thing, though I’m pretty sure it’s a Koz thing. If I didn’t like it, I would have cut off all ties with him by now, but the thing is I fucking love the way he owns me. His possessiveness feeds my soul if truth be told.
“Don’t you fucking dare tell him I even looked at it, Raney,” Ibis snaps, not even bothering to hide his trepidation. “And Joker’s right, the deal is you come see your family first before you start doing all your other shit.”
“Aww, are the widdle bikies upset…” I tease.
“Fuck, Joker’s right, you are tired and bitchy. Grab a couple of extra blunts for her or she’s going to be snarking on us the whole time she’s here.” Hawk laughs.
And then I lean on him, putting my arm over his shoulder while Joker takes the other side, and the two of them carry me out to the car. My car, the one dad got for my birthday years ago. Obviously I’ve never driven it, way too many memories tied up with it.
The guys set me up in my old bedroom at King’s place; they leave me with enough weed to make a dealer jealous, and a promise to check on the house during the night. By the time I’ve had a shower, the omega pack from the girls still hasn’t shown up. I’ll probably freak out in the morning, but instead, I climb into my childhood bed, fluff up all the blankets I can find making, an ad hoc nest before I burrow under and float off to sleep. Like literally, I’m so fucking high and happy as I cuddle into my nest of blankets and Puck’s rainy scent drenched hoodie, I’m glad no one can see my stupid grin.
ChapterSixteen
RANEY
God knows what time it is, but a constant banging wakes me. Like it’s one, two, three, four, BANG. One, two, three, four, BANG. It’s not like it’s unusual because at the compound, something is always going on. Unless bikies are doing a ‘job’ that requires them to be stealthy, they only have one volume—loud. But this is different.
Pulling on a pair of sweats from the closet, I stumble around my bedroom. The night is fading, but it’s still cold, so I nab Puck’s hoodie from out of my nest before sliding into a pair of old boots to find out what the hell is going on.
